


the wedding bells ring for you, not me

by esbis



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, but feel free to interpret it as any way you like, platonic pruhun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2584439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esbis/pseuds/esbis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you getting married?"</p><p>He looks up at the sky, at the ever-changing spectrum of colors, following the loose petals that scatter to the west. He swings his legs lightly, feeling the cold metal pressed against his skin even through the thickness of his jeans. The bench is now rusted around the edges, worn by sun and rain and years.</p><p>No, he thinks. He won't. Not soon, and probably not ever, but maybe that's just how he's thinking right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wedding bells ring for you, not me

"I'll never marry."

She curls her lip and he finds himself doing the same, as they swing their legs back and forth, calves hitting the smooth metal of the bench. Above them, petals swirled, curling and scattering with the warm, post-summer breeze. Both cast their eyes upwards, avoiding the chapel that stood old and proud to the left of the park, and the crowd that gathered around the newlyweds that stood at its grand doors, decked in black and white.

"I probably won't, too."

"It's too much of a fuss..."

"...I'm too awesome for marriage."

She raises an eyebrow at him, a smile twitching at the right corner of her lip as disgust is momentarily forgotten, replaced by amusement at her companion's last statement. Here they are, two kids in third grade; sitting on a green metal bench and talking about marriage. Yet, neither of them acknowledge this.

"Tchh. No you aren't."

"Yes I am." He pauses then, a look of determination and arrogance fleeting across his face, adds, "Bet I can prove you wrong someday. You're gonna get married and have to wear a big white dress and _kiss a guy_."

But by the time he is finished talking, she has leapt to her feet and is running across the grass -- in the distance is her mother's car pulling up -- and before he can make a sound of indignation, she waves, and calls over her shoulder, "Bye, loser!"

He echoes the farewell, a bit louder, and as the car begins to move his voice and smile die slowly, gradually, like the sky that shifts from orange to peach to violet above him.

 

~

 

Eighth grade, she is a flower girl and Gilbert is sitting in a pew third from the front, a smug grin stretching his lips. She shoots him a glare from the step she is standing on -- unfortunately, the camera flashes, capturing her grimace and forever imposing as possible blackmail and never to leave the patterned confines of her parents' photo album dedicated to her most embarrassing moments, a hated tome that was kept somewhere they never let her know lest she feed every page to the stove.

As she blinks the last of the white flash from her lashes, the bride announces the beginning of the party, eliciting a cacophony of whoops and cheers from the small group of guests that have gathered for the event. Elizaveta hops down from the steps, forgetting the little woven basket she had set on the floor earlier, and marches her way towards Gilbert with her dress bunched high above her ankles.

"Don't you dare say a word."

He feels his smile wobble as he stares down at her; dark green eyes flash warningly, her fist in between them. Yet, he looks past this and right at her, fighting down the heat that threatens to color the tips of his ear, and says, "You look stupid."

Even though what he's said is the exact contrary -- her hair is now shiny, curled and peppered with a shower of jewels, the flowing, pale green dress and the gold dusting her eyelids look absolutely stunning -- the statement slips from his lips before he can get a hold of them and, just when he even thinks of grasping them, a solid pain shoots down his left arm. " _Scheiße!_ "

"Jerk," she mutters, as she flexes her fingers.

"What, want me to tell you you look nice?"

Her parents are calling for her, somewhere over the din of people talking and leaving the chapel, but she merely raises her chin at him, unsure of what to say. Both of them knew that either option would guarantee Gilbert a hit, either way, so she changes the topic with a sentence that, over the years, she has said as carelessly as she would throw a flower to the wind.

"...I'm never getting married."

"Ah-huh." By this time, only a handful of people are left inside the chapel, so he tugs her arm and motions for her to come outside to take the ride to the restaurant. The skies are a thousand shades of apricot and orange and the stone floor is alight with a thousand multicolored specks of stained-glass light.

 

~

 

The night is still young, and Gilbert uses this as an excuse for him not to set his eyes upon the homework that has been assigned to him. "You shouldn't take college so carelessly, you know," Elizaveta calls to him as she pulls two small tubs of ice cream from their little freezer.

A noncommittal noise escapes the boy from his position sprawled across the sofa, on his stomach, and the thought of pushing him right off it hovers around the back of her mind when she notices that the channel-flicking has stopped and he is lingering a bit too long on Project Runway.

"You are so gay, dude."

A snort escapes him. "Oh, darling -- did I mention you'd look lovely in green?" He props himself up on his elbows, looking for her response to his imitation of Feliks, who was, according to most, gay as pink hell. Gilbert avoided him due to that one time he had his head bashed in by said crossdresser and his friend Toris; that was far, far back in primary school but still. He was wary of Ivan and his group. 

"And you," she says, punctuating her beginning with a slam of the silverware drawer -- maybe she shouldn't have gotten him a spoon and made him get up on his ass and crawl to it -- "would look absolutely fabulous in layers and layers of pink chiffon."

"Strapless and bejeweled," Gilbert sings, pretending not to have heard her previous retort. "Sparkling with an amount of glitter that would make Edward Whats-his-name jealo--"

"I am so never going to marry."

She raises her hand to hurl her spoon at him when the pizza arrives, and she makes him answer the door despite the fact that he's wearing a loose shirt patterned with yellow chicks. The delivery boy, short and gangly, raises and eyebrow at the strange sight, but hands him the boxes anyways.

Elizaveta can't help but laugh.

 

~

 

Another wedding, and Gilbert does nothing but look out the window, even though he can't because it's heavily stained with deep, vibrant colors that cast light upon the floor and seats, on his lap and on his pale skin. 

How many times has he been to a wedding held in this chapel?

He can't do anything rash, because at his right is Ludwig, who wouldn't really hurt him but would really take away his laptop for a year and that would be bad; and at his left is Vash, who may or may not be hiding a gun underneath his shirt -- bringing a gun inside a chapel, really -- so Gilbert can only decide between being deprived of the world wide web, getting shot in the foot, or staying put.

The suit is horribly itchy.

Those flowers are nothing but tacky.

That music is inhumanely slow.

He wishes Elizaveta is sitting beside him; the urge of voicing a complaint aloud is really, awfully strong. But she is not there, she will not respond to his statements with another one of her own, because at the moment she is at the altar, unrecognizable in a gown of white and silver, unrecognizable with her hair pulled up high into an elaborate bun, unrecognizable as she becomes one with Roderich.

Roderich and Elizaveta. Elizaveta and Roderich. Elizaveta Edelstein. Huh, who would have known.

But as she, now a married woman, faces her family with a smile radiant enough to challenge the sun, he realizes maybe she won't turn out to be that all different. Maybe. After all, she is still Elizaveta, still spent her childhood and teenage years with him, and nothing would change that past.

She catches his eye, for a fleeting moment, and with the wink he throws at her he delivers the message he's been waiting to tell her all these years.

"Told you so."

 

~

 

"Are you getting married?"

He looks up at the sky, at the ever-changing spectrum of colors, following the loose petals that scatter to the west. He swings his legs lightly, feeling the cold metal pressed against his skin even through the thickness of his jeans. The bench is now rusted around the edges, worn by sun and rain and years.

"I'm too awesome for marriage."

She turns to him, an eyebrow raised, torn between amusement and disappointment -- even after all these years, huh? "You can't be alone forever."

He closes his eyes, leaning back as a huff, a wisp of a chuckle escapes his lips. "I can. Even if I don't want to, I've got Ludwig hanging around all the time. And then there's Franny and Tonio, if I want some company..." _And you_ , he wants to add, _will you be there?_

A futile thought, a rhetorical question. Of course not -- at least, not in the way she used to. Despite Roderich's many trips outside the countries for meetings and concerts, her visits are significantly less and less constant, irregular; and though he will never admit it he fears the day their only meetings will be upon accident; a glimpse through a crowd, a wave from a window.

She sighs, then, not quite defeated but simply, hoping she can get a positive response from him the next time she asks. 

When the sun disappears behind the horizon of buildings and the sky is a pale, pale shade of violet, she takes that as her cue to stand up and leave. "Bye, loser," she says, softly, with her nose scrunched playfully though that doesn't quite distract him from the gentle punch she lands on his shoulder.

"Bye, loser."

He notices that the breeze around him dies as her shadow disappears around the corner.

**Author's Note:**

> I had decided this would be platonic PruHun from the start (sorry, fellow shippers) but feel free to imagine that there are underlying romantic feelings...somewhere...in there.


End file.
